Posted on 03/14/2016 8:12:52 AM PDT by george76
For all intents and purposes, the draught is over. But it will take more time to get the government to relax restrictions because of all the extra money the draught has brought them. Here is a graph of Lake Shasta (it is typical of all of our major water storage facilities):
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/resDetailOrig.action?resid=SHA
( this page may load slowly at times, and the number shown was as of midnight last night. Right now other data show an inflow of 75,000 cubic feet per second.
“As the article points out, it has nothing to do with the unwashed masses. The liberal elites point at Big Ag using large amounts of water to produce low value crops(hay). It makes no difference whether you are a liberal elite or the unwashed, Big Ag uses most of the water in California.”
You might want to take a trip through the Central Valley right now and see how “Big Ag” is changing. Groves of fruit trees that used to be flooded are now all on drip irrigation. And that hay goes to feed millions of cows that are raised for dairy products and meat. It, in and of itself, is “low-value,” but the next levels are most decidedlly not. You could make a case for rice here, but then you’d piss off all the Japanese-American rice farmers and be called a racist! More problems brought on by “diversity.”
They don’t fine the individual, they fine the city.
I do recall from re-reading the article at your bequest that it said, “The city also began penalizing profligate users.”
We do not have a water problem in California! We have a water management problem. Yes! we have been in drought conditions for the past several years, as we have been in this cyclical condition for hundreds of years. The problem comes in where we are taking all available water in the state and sending it out to the ocean to keep salmon more comfortable. We do not have any major salmon runs but that does not stop the logic of the liberals. Economic control is the issue. not salmon. not drought. not conservation.
Trying to wash away the sin in his abode is a big job and never ending job...
That, or maybe he has water cooled air conditioners?
That’s where I want to be....
Including those cows in Asia.
US farmers making hay with alfafa exports to China
I don't mean to single out California because all of the west is exporting hay. All of the west uses prior appropriation water rights(use it or lose it), hay is easy to grow and harvest, and there are many empty containers headed to Asia.
Actually, no. There was a recent court case that found it was forbidden under the state constitution to do that.
California drought: Court rules tiered water rates violate state constitution
Industrial and agricultural users are dead set against any change to this.
“I don’t mean to single out California because all of the west is exporting hay. All of the west uses prior appropriation water rights(use it or lose it), hay is easy to grow and harvest, and there are many empty containers headed to Asia.”
I’ve lived in California for all of my 75 years. Ariculture used to be the largest contributor to our economy until Silicon Valley and Social Media companies supplanted it. Nevertheless, it’s still a multi-billion dollar enterprise that feeds our country. The problem we have is California is a desert. Without water there’d be nothing being grown. But with water it’s a breadbasket. The Central Valley Project was supposed to curtail the groundwater pumping that fueled agribusiness. The problem is, that corporate farms just expanded acreage with the new water brought down from Shasta and other northeastern reservoirs. It is so bad in southern San Juaquin County, that in places, unfetterd groundwater pumping has caused the terrain to subside as much as 50 feet! The corporate farmers have serious clout in our legislature, so for years they’ve gotten their way. Unfortunately, now they’ve come up against two opposing forces, the doubling of our population over the past twenty years and the environmental movement. Now people have to “compete” with the farmers for water, because now, there isn’t enough storage capacity to cover the occasional drought. We, here in Contra Costa County, for the first time are having to accept the mixing of Sacramento River water with our normal supply of clean, pure water brought directly from limited sources in the Sierras. We now have to filter our drinking water to remove lord knows what because of the additional Sacramento source. And you know it’s not clean, because it stinks. So you’re right, we need to start making choices for our citizens, not corporate farming (and our government) interests. Some things we grow here should not be grown here because they are prolific users of water ( rice is a shining example). And as you point out, we should not be exporting food outside our country so long as we really don’t have an adequate supply of water to support that business. Finally, we do need to build more storage capacity. We now rely on early rains coupled with melting snow to keep our reservoirs full. Right now, because of the exceptionally high amount of rain, our reservoirs are going to be full early, so they will just have to let that water go back to the ocean soas to make room for the snow melt. We need to be able to capture all of both sources. And don’t get me going on the unfettered growth of Los Angeles. LA has stolen water resources from the north and from Arizona for a century. Now, Arizona is taking the water it was alotted ( but never took until recently) it’s legal entitlement to the Colorado River that came with the construction of Hoover Dam. And people up in Mono County finally prevailed in court to stop LA from taking so much water from the Owens River Valley that Mono Lake was drying up. And yet, LA still grows by leaps and bound with Illegals who along with being criminals, use water. Go Figure!
I see this report was from last year. has the case progressed to the California Supreme Court yet?
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